


MAD

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: 99 per cent bickering, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, It's just an origin story, Pre-Canon, the tags make it sound worse than it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24793669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: The man was on the floor, slumped against the bed. He was also standing, looking down at himself. He looked up sharply, eyes wide as the Captain stepped through the door.“Who the bloody hell are you? What - how did you do that?”“I am the Captain. And you, I am sorry to say, are dead.”The Captain is the first one to find Julian after he dies. Heads butt. They just need to get it out of their systems.
Relationships: The Captain & Julian Fawcett
Comments: 18
Kudos: 112





	MAD

“Good God, man,” the Captain barked, covering his eyes and stepping backwards through the wall. Really - it was bad enough to have to put up with these bloody affairs at all, but to walk in on a man doing _that_ in his own bedroom. It was indecent.

It was also late; the other visitors had all retired hours ago and the other ghosts had gone to their rooms - or to stake out a new one if they had been invaded as he had. Not that he imagined any other person was behaving in quite the same way as the chap who was in the Captain’s bed.

The Captain stood stock still and tried not to listen to the gentle but insistent tap of the bed frame on the wall. If he was a better man, he would have walked away. But the sight had shocked him, and in all honesty he was quite frozen to the spot. Did that pass for a past time these days? The world was leaving him behind so quickly. 

It was a good thing indeed that the Captain couldn’t blush, because he would have at the sound of a bitten off groan that echoed in the quiet corridor. He knew that sound well enough; the cry of a lonely man.

The creak of a door at the end of the corridor made the Captain jump out of his skin, and he took a half step away from the room. What was he doing, standing in the dark, listening like some kind of degenerate. But as he turned to walk away, thoroughly ashamed, there was a strange gurgling sound and then a thump as though something heavy had hit the floor.

The Captain had heard sounds like that before, and they were never good. Usually very bad. Usually when a man was down.

“Good Lord,” he muttered, then cautiously put his head back through the door.

“Ah,” he said. “Yes, I thought so.”

The man was on the floor, slumped against the bed. He was also standing, looking down at himself. He looked up sharply, eyes wide as the Captain stepped through the door.

“Who the bloody hell are you? What - how did you do that?”

The Captain drew himself up, stick under his arm. He hadn’t been the first on the scene when Patrick died, so this was rather new to him. 

“I am the Captain. And you, I am sorry to say, are dead.”

The man looked wildly from the Captain’s face to his own body, then lifted a hand to wipe against his nose. 

“Jesus Christ. How much did I take?”

“I don’t know entirely what you mean,” the Captain said stiffly. “But I’d say that was your cause of death.”

He pointed at the extra tie around the man’s neck. 

“This is a dream,” the man said. “Just a dream. Too much, pickled my brain with it.”

“You’re not dreaming,” the Captain said. He was not especially good at this, it seemed. Perhaps he should fetch - well, none of the others should be subjected to the sight of this. At least he was experienced in living alongside idiot men, and watching the things that they did.

“Of course I’m dreaming,” the man snapped, then tried to sit on the bed. He fell straight through. 

“Focus!” the Captain said, and the man managed to stop himself before he went through the floor as well. That was usually quite an amusing thing to see, but right now it would probably only make things worse. 

“Oh Jesus, I’m dead. I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“I’m afraid so, old chap. And, like me, it seems you are not destined to be moving on.”

The man put his head in his hands.

“And I died like this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Fuck.”

The Captain did not approve of the language, and he itched to say so, but held his tongue. It was just the two of them for now. He could address it later. The man had just died, after all.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Julian. Julian Fawcett.”

“And you are - a member of parliament? That’s right, isn’t it?”

Julian nodded, then eyed himself again.

“God, they’ll have a field day. And Margot. Fuck. What an idiot.”

The Captain couldn’t see them moving from the room anytime soon, so for lack of anything else to do, he perched on the edge of the bed. Perhaps he’d select a new room, now that Julian had - yes, it was time for a change. 

The house was silent. Whatever debauchery was happening, it all seemed to have ended now.

Eventually, Julian spoke. 

“What do you mean, not destined to be moving on?”

Ah.

“Well, I’m afraid that there are some souls who - when they die - don’t move on. Their spirits linger. In the place that they died.”

“Ghosts. Are you sure I’m not dreaming, or having a nightmare?”

“I thought that myself. It takes some time to adjust.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I believe I died in 1947.”

Julian groaned and got to his feet. He started to pace. The Captain understood pacing. 

“You’ve been here almost fifty years!”

Best not to mention Robin’s tenure right now, then. 

“That isn’t too long, old chap, compared to some of the others,” he said instead.

“Others?”

“Other ghosts. You’re number nine, not counting the dozen plague ghosts who live in the cellar, but they tend to keep to themselves.”

Julian paused, nodded, then continued his pacing. Unfortunate, of course, that he should have died as he did. Not least because he’d be without trousers for as long as he was stuck here. The Captain didn’t envy him that at all. At least his shirt made him a little bit decent - having him around Fanny, Katherine and Mary would have been impossible if he wasn’t afforded that small dignity. And what a pain that would have been. Julian did not seem the sort to do as he was told.

“Perhaps we should get you out of here,” the Captain, as gently as he knew how.

“Why?”

Julian stopped again and gazed down at himself. The Captain remembered looking down at his own body like that, how strange it was to see what other people had always seen of him and think that - more than anything - he was so much smaller than he imagined.

“From experience, it is best to be out of the way when they come to take your body away. They will not have kind things to say about-”

“Yes, alright,” Julian snapped. “Don’t make a song and dance about it.”

“I’ll forgive your tone for now,” the Captain bristled, his hands tightening on his stick. “But you should know-”

“Don’t tell me what to do. I just died.”

“No reason to lose control of yourself,” the Captain said, getting to his feet. “Now, are you coming along or not? It doesn’t matter either way to me.”

“Do you have another one of those sticks shoved somewhere?” Julian growled, but he did follow him out of the room. Insolent then, but not stupid.

“This isn’t happening,” Julian muttered, as they marched along the corridor. “I’m just high as a kite. That’s all.”

The Captain wasn’t familiar with the expression, but he surmised it was nothing good. The house was full of visitors, and his fellow ghosts were scattered around the house too, but he could direct Julian to a spare room somewhere and worry about him in the morning. The others would find out soon enough about their new member. 

“Hey, what did you say your name was again?” Julian asked.

“I didn’t. And I won’t. You can call me Captain.”

“And you died in 1947.”

“Yes.”

“Oh! You’re the soldier. The one in the leaflet.”

“What the blazes are you talking about?”

The Captain stopped dead, and Julian ran into him. 

“Oh. We can touch each other then.”

“What do you mean, the soldier in the leaflet?” the Captain asked. By God, the man was smirking.

“The leaflet for the conference centre. A little bit of history. Some poet died here. The lady of the house in mysterious circumstances. And the soldier. Captain Roderick Taylor. Died in the library.”

He grinned. 

“You did yourself in. So you can hardly judge me-”

The Captain couldn’t help himself. He drove Julian against the wall, his stick under the man’s chin.

“Touched a nerve have I?” Julian crowed, totally unconcerned. 

“Spurned lover, was it, Captain Taylor?”

“Shut up.”

“Ah, so true then.”

The Captain looked the man in the eye, and then stepped back. Unbecoming of an officer, to behave in such a way. But his name - he hadn’t heard it in so long. And Julian was still smirking at him.

“I’d be indebted if you kept that information to yourself,” he growled. “And I apologise. For handling you. It’s hardly a decent welcome.”

A crash from somewhere on the floor below made them both start, and Julian finally stopped staring at him. 

“I really am dead, aren’t I?”

“Yes. I am sorry.”

Julian sighed and looked down at his socked feet. He grimaced.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll keep what I know to myself, if you promise not to tell these other ghosts how I died. Mutually assured destruction, eh?”

The Captain clenched his hands around his stick. A tenuous agreement, but what else could they do?

“Agreed.”

There was another crash, closer, and Humphrey’s body careened into the corridor. Julian’s eyes widened, and he would surely have gone pale if he could. The Captain did not preen, but he had been much cooler about it when he saw Humphrey for the first time. 

“Ah yes. This is half of Humphrey. You’ll stumble across the rest of him soon enough.”

“I’ve gone mad. Haven’t I? I died but I’ve lost my mind,” Julian said. “Tell me the truth.”

“We’re all mad here,” the Captain said, and he tried out one of Julian’s own smirks. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t make the best of it.


End file.
